Jazz Articles about Yusef Lateef

About Yusef Lateef

Book Review

Soundtrack To A Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism

by Ian Patterson
October 7, 2021

Soundtrack To A Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism Richard Brent Turner 256 Pages ISBN: 9781479806768 NYU Press 2021 The influence of Islam on African American jazz musicians post-WWII and the influence of those musicians in the spread of Islam in American cities are interrelated topics that, broadly speaking, are not part of most mainstream histories of jazz. Weave Black internationalism into the equation, that's to say how pan-global liberation/anti-colonial movements ...

Building a Jazz Library

Yusef Lateef: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Blowing Cultural Nationalism Out Of The Water

by Chris May
November 18, 2020

A pioneer of global and modal jazz, the multi-instrumentalist and composer Yusef Lateef is only beginning to have his importance in the history of the music properly acknowledged. After languishing off-catalogue for decades, much of his output is being made available once more. A treasure trove of great jazz is out there waiting to be rediscovered. Lateef was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. When he was five, his family moved to Detroit, where he began his career playing in ...

Album Review

Yusef Lateef: The Doctor Is In ...And Out

Read "The Doctor Is In ...And Out" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
July 6, 2018

The soul-jazz albums Yusef Lateef recorded for Atlantic between 1967 and 1976, of which The Doctor Is In...And Out is the tenth and final release, may prove to be among his most enduring releases. That suggestion will not chime with the sentiments of many of Lateef's longtime fans, who who dismiss the Atlantics as sell-outs and rate Lateef most highly for the hard bop / modal albums he released on Savoy, Riverside, Prestige and Impulse! before signing with Atlantic. But ...

Profile

In Memoriam: Dr. Yusef Abdul Lateef

by John Wesley Reed Jr.
December 30, 2013

Yusef Lateef defined music far from Western concepts while presenting cross-cultural fusions. His life was committed as a premier jazz saxophonist, flutist, and many woodwinds entering crossing musical boundaries. This journey ended on Monday, December 23, 2013 at his home in Shutesbury, Amherst, Massachusetts. Dr. Lateef was 93 years old. Dr. Lateef's distinctive sound came from a tenor saxophone, mystified with a big tone with blues indications. His style separated similar saxophonists during the 1940s. Playing in the ...

Interview

Yusef Lateef's Secret Garden

by Chris M. Slawecki
December 24, 2013

This interview was originally published in February 2000. Yusef Lateef will tell you--politely, firmly, insistently, frequently--that he does not play jazz. He was born Bill Evans in Chattanooga (TN), but grew up in Detroit a tenor saxophone student who in the 1940s worked and studied alongside the likes of Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie and Hot Lips Page. In the 1950s, he studied composition and flute at Wayne State University; shortly thereafter he assumed the name Yusef ...

Live Review

Yusef Lateef: Celebrating 75 Years of Music at Roulette in Brooklyn

by Scott Krane
April 9, 2013

Rarely in the history of contemporary American music has one artist iconized as many aspects of organized sound as Yusef Lateef who appeared in Brooklyn, New York on Saturday night, April 6, at the new Brooklyn version of the Manhattan performance space, Roulette, near the new Barclay's Arena. In a two-hour performance billed, “Yusef Lateef: Celebrating 75 years of music," the 92-year-old remnant of modern jazz displayed the breadth of his musical imagination in a four-part concert.The Grammy Award-winning ...

Album Review

Yusef Lateef: Roots Run Deep

Read "Roots Run Deep" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
October 7, 2012

Roots Run Deep forms a further installment in the ongoing strand of investigation into the marriage of words and music, which has found a home on the Paris-based Rogue Art label, that also includes Maison Hantee (2009). It's unusual in that though issued under the name of veteran multi instrumentalist Yusef Lateef, the work was actually conceived by filmmaker Nicolas Humbert and engineer Marc Parisotto. The two Frenchmen are credited with composition; having assembled the 34-minute program by matching the ...